Searching for Significance - SS Part 2

A Shocking Place - Shocking Statement's of Jesus Part 2

As part of the series "Shocking Statements" at North Point Community Church, Brent Shoemaker talked about ranking, competition and comparison, a topic that often hits a little close to home in small town America. ( http://www.northpoint.org/messages/shocking-statements-of-jesus )  As one of four daughters, I can't think of anything I did more often in my childhood than trying to one-up my sisters. If they did something, I had to do something better to prove that I was the best and try to win peoples' (....usually my parents',) approvals.

Academically, this has served as a good motivation tool. Although there's no difference between a 93 and a 100 on college transcripts, there are many classes that I have put in more effort not because I wanted to learn more, but because I refused to get a lower grade that a freshman whiz-kid or one of my friends that never ever studies. If we're honest with ourselves, we are always doing these three things because we always want to find significance in ourselves.

Going to the gym is one of those places that I always find myself struggling with ranking and comparison. I see shirtless women with layers of make-up on and their hair done perfect, and I think to myself "I'm working out harder than them." I see the marathon runner casually sprinting 10 miles and I think "I will never be able to run one mile that fast. They'd lap me in a one lap race." Depending on who is at the gym on that particular day, I usually envision myself as about average on the fitness toe-tom poll. Never the less, I see my significance based on how great I am compared to others, and I'm not the only one.

When you look in Mark 9, you will see that the disciples did this too. After traveling around to different areas, all the while Jesus performing miracles, the group arrived in Capernaum. Knowing full well what had happened on the road, Jesus asked the disciples, "What were you arguing about on the road?" (v. 33) He knew however that they had been debating amongst themselves who was the greatest.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Here they had a man in there group who could perform miracles and people wanted to make him king. Then this same man kept talking about a kingdom. Why wouldn't they want to be the closest one to him? I will be honest and say that there are people in my life that I've tried really hard to get in their close-knit circle because I know they have the power to change the world and I want to have that claim to fame, not because I truly loved them. Here, the disciples were having that conversation, but they were ashamed to tell Jesus.

But, "Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." (v. 35) This is so contrary to our society today. It seems radical. Even in bible times, you know the disciples must have been somewhat confused. How could being low make one high? How could being a servant be elevating? Nothing that he was saying was making sense.

When though, was Jesus like just another king? He was born in a stable to a carpenter and his wife. He was not rich. He loved on others without expecting anything in return. And he served. If you think about who you admire most, who comes to mind? To me, these people would probably be my parents, my grandparents, soldiers, police, firefighters, nurses and my teachers. In each case, they serve others to bring them up instead of trying to crawl over people to get to the top. These people have always had time for me, to pour into me even when they're obviously running on empty themselves.

And Jesus was the perfect example of service. He didn't have a home because he was constantly moving from one place to another helping people. He knew that the greatest influence you can make is to serve and empower others. While he could have placed himself above them all, been born into a ruling family and demand all his subjects to bow down or die, he didn't.

I think what Jesus was trying to tell the disciples then, and us now, was that they were looking in the wrong place to find their significance and they were missing out on something greater because their eyes were on their own reflections instead of downwards trying to lift others up.

Because we are like sheep, often too dense to get anything the first time, Jesus went and took a child up in his arms and said to the Twelve, "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me."

YES! I finally did something right! I love kids! In fact, there are times when I would pay someone to let me babysit their children just to be able to be with children. While not everyone probably has that extreme of a love for kids, I think it's pretty safe to assume that most people like kids. So Jesus is telling us that welcoming kids is welcoming God and that's what will bring us greatness. Wow, I am so great!

But oh no.... not so fast. This is where putting things into context really matters. In today's society, we see kids as precious little bundles of joy, but was that what they were seen as during this period? Not hardly. As Pastor Brent pointed out in his sermon, kids in this day were not held in the value that we see them today. They were often seen as undesirable. If a woman had a baby and the father didn't want to keep it, they would "take care of it" by putting the baby outside where it was left to die or be adopted. Now being adopted, that doesn't sound so bad right... until you find out where most of these babies were going. In this time period, people could be sold into slavery and lots of times, if these kids were adopted, that's where they went, not to a loving family. Think back to the story of Moses. The government killed the innocent babies. No matter how you look at it, these children, these babies, were not looked at as highly treasured possessions. So Jesus was telling them, love those that you've placed below you to obtain greatness.

Application!

To the disciples, there's no doubt that welcoming and loving kids had to have been hard but Jesus told them, whoever welcomes them in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me (v. 37)

***Who is right underneath you that you could be serving but are missing out on because you're too busy crawling over them to try to reach greatness on your own? *** For me, I know one of those people is my little sister. This last summer, I spent so much time to fix my relationships with adults that I missed out on some really important moments with her.

***How can you serve them? Give them your time AND your attention. *** A lot of the time we try to do one of these things without the other. We can sit by someone watching movies for 3 hours but never give them our attention. Or, we tell someone we really want to know what's going on with their lives but get up and leave in 5 minutes because we have other things to do to raise ourselves up.

***How do we get significance? We already have it.*** When you think about the greatest act of service, most people would agree it's a life. That's why we have days like Veteran's day, to thank those that gave up everything for us. That's why so many people suffer from survivor’s guilt when someone else dies instead of them. There is no greater sacrifice to show one's love than with their life. And that's why you're significant. The disciples were hanging out with God, fighting over who was greatest, trying to determine their significance while the whole time Jesus was saying....You are significant. That's why I'm here, to die for you, to pay the price of your sins because I love you and I want you. You are significant. Period.

In Christ's Love,

Liza

Shocking Statements of Jesus

Sometime last semester, I went to my roommate's church where they were talking about life apps. For the first sermon of the series, they played a sermon that was available at the North Point Community Church. I absolutely loved this sermon series because it talked about actually having applying biblical teachings to our lives.

When I got back up to Fort Collins for the rest of break, I found myself restless to hear more messages so I went back to this sight (http://www.northpoint.org/messages ) and searched for a title that intrigued my heart. And that's when I found Shocking Statements of Jesus.

During the first sermon, the preacher touched on the Liar, Lunatic or Lord Trilemma made famous by C.S. Lewis. If you think about it, there is no reason that Jesus would have said these things if he was simply trying to get popular. Think about it.... would anyone win an election by telling people to pay their taxes, give all their belongings away, and wash other people's feet? No way! But those are just a few things Jesus said because He wanted people to live for a higher purpose and differently than what the world was telling them.

For this first sermon in the series however, the pastor focused on John 6. To put this in context, Jesus had just fed 5000 people in verses 1-14. This is amazing because;

1. This was probably the largest group at that time to ever be fed all at the same time. Now a day, a good catering service could feed that many people so we down grade how truly amazing it was that this many people were eating at once.

2. Five loaves of bread and two fish fed 5000 people. No matter how big you think these "small" loaves and fish may have been, it's hard to believe that in a normal situation they would be able to satisfy more than a few teenage boys. Add in that the 5000 people may or may not have included women and children, and this can be nothing short of a miracle.

3. There were 12 baskets of leftovers! Does this even need to be explained? The fact that the people were satisfied and there were leftovers just goes to show that God is more than sufficient.

So Jesus just did this awesome thing where he fed thousands of people from basically dinner for two, and then he got up withdrew from the crowd because he knew they would want to "make him king by force" (v. 15). In my mind, just the fact that he left instead of basking in the glory and praises of people wanting to make him king is amazing and shows that his heart was different than those of men. In the next few verses, Jesus walks on water, showing yet again that He was special.

At this point I can't help but put myself in the position of a disciple. If I was one of them I would be like "Wow! This guy is the real thing. He's doing all these miracles. He's going to take over this land and be King.... and I'm His friend! I am so stinkin' awesome by association!"

So as you can expect, the people who were fed the day before followed him. I mean, why wouldn't they? He had served them free food and they wanted more. When they went to Jesus however he told them "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." (v. 26-27)

Now these people are excited! They have to be thinking "YES! Today he's going to feed us food that will never spoil." So, they ask Jesus what they should do and Jesus replies "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (v. 28-29)

Confused, and still seeking food, they reply "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers are the manna in the desert; as it is written; 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" (v. 30-31)

This leads to Jesus trying to explain that God, not Moses delivered the manna but now God was delivering the true bread of God to give life to the world. This makes the crowd want the bread even more and they cry out "from now on give us this bread." (v. 34)

Then Jesus tells the people that HE is the bread of life, that those who come to him will never go hungry. He tells them that the Father sent him so that they could have eternal life. The crowd begins to grumble at this saying things about how he was the son of Joseph, a man that they knew so how could he have come down from heaven. Jesus then continued to try to explain, telling them about the ways of the Father (v.35-47) . Again he repeats "I am the bread of life.  Your forefathers are the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man ma eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is m flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." (v. 48-51)

Eat my flesh? Were they really hearing him right? The Jews again began to question him saying "how can this man give us his flesh to eat?", but Jesus replied "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. " (v.52-56)

Eat my flesh. Drink my blood. Now would you say these counts as a SHOCKING STATEMENTS? I know I sure would. See, Jesus was obviously not just trying to say things to get people to follow him because if he would have, there is NO WAY he would go around telling people to eat and drink of his body. Even with the vampire craze in the states right now, I still think people would look at him like "ARE YOU NUTS!?"

Now if you grew up like me, this is usually where the sermon ends, with the pastor talking about the Passover supper, but I absolutely loved that this pastor took further on to the rest of the chapter. There are still 11 more verses in John chapter 6.

In my bible, the subheading for the next session is called "Many Disciples Desert Jesus". In all honesty, I have never even heard of this section. I have been missing out on some important stuff! In verse 60, the disciples said "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it? Like the crowd that is sure to have left, the disciples were thinking about it. Then Jesus says to them "Does this offend you?" (v. 61)

I think it's really important to point out here that Jesus doesn't back down from what He's been saying. He doesn't try to sugar-coat it. He is bold, and "from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him" (v.66) but Jesus turned and asked the twelve "You do not want to leave too, do you?" (v.67)

At this point, you have to know, that the twelve are at least thinking about turning back and going to their old lives. They don't want to follow a crazy man. The day before they had been in the close circle of a man that the people wanted to make king, but now that he looked like a lunatic, why would they choose to go with him? They were doubting if they wanted to stay with this man because it was no longer a "give a little, get a lot situation". With his crazy speech, Jesus was making following him an unpopular choice that seemed to cost more than the rewards it would reap.

But then Simon Peter, one of the twelve stood up and said "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe AND KNOW that you are the Holy One of God".

Bam! Those are powerful words. See, Simon Peter had this flash of insight that walking away from Jesus meant that they had to be walking towards someone else. No one else had these words of eternal life. They didn't just believe that Jesus was the "Holy One of God".... they knew it!

Application Time!

Now just looking at this last part of the passage, I can see myself as one of those disciples; I have tried to walk away. In fact, I would bet that at some point in our lives, all of us at least entertain the thought of walking away from God because the cost of following seems to be a lot higher than the rewards. In times of trials, transitions and temptations, it's often easier to just saw, "I'm going my own way God. You're too crazy and outlandish for me." Look at people in the bible; they did it too. The first example to pop into my head is Jonah.

Jonah 1:1-3

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amitai: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me."

BUT JONAH RAN AWAY FROM THE LORD ....

But the thing is, He came back to God. He KNEW that God was in charge, and although he ran away, he ran back to God when he finally had enough of trying to do things his own way.

When I think back to when I ran away from God, I can clearly see how I was running towards the devil's tricks, towards mirages of fulfilling things. People, relationships, food, exercise, romance and media.... nothing filled that void, but I hurt myself in the process of trying to find fulfillment in those directions and I missed out on some amazing comfort from my Daddy who loved me. In the back of my mind I have to keep this lesson for when I face trials, transitions and temptations....

TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?

In Christ's love,

Liza

Panning for Gold

So... when I sat down to watch the live stream from Rez at 8:30 am Sunday in the living room of my parent's house, I had just finished having quiet time in which I prayed that Daddy would show me what I needed to be doing with my life. As always, He was faithful and had perfect timing.

When Pastor Mike Olson started his message he said "this message can be life changing if you let it." Then we went over to a tub where he had dirt, water and a pan (a gold panning pan that is). He said that almost a year ago, God had said to him pan for gold. Not knowing what He was talking about at the time, Mike wrote it down and went on with his life waiting on God's timing to reveal His meaning.

Now have you ever been panning for gold? Yeah... me either, but when I was in New Zealand, a couple of my friends went to "Shanty Town" where they panned for gold and subsequently, became obsessed with it. They bought pans and proceeded to tell me the elaborate plans how they were going to make their millions in the streams.

Although I doubted that they would be millionaires like they were planning, they did know what they were talking about when it came to the basics of panning. As Pastor Olson explained, the first step is believing there is gold to be found. Next, you submerge the pan and pull up water, dirt and hopefully some gold flakes. Then, by carefully shifting the pan back and forth or side to side, you begin to kick out the dirt and part of the water until hopefully, you are left with gold. This cannot happen however without the movement of the water in the pan that washes away all the dirt. Because gold has a higher specific gravity... aka nerd speak that it's heavy so it sinks.... this precious element will stay on the bottom of the pan. And that's how you pan for gold and make millions........

But Pastor Mike wasn't there to show us how to make millions of dollars. Instead, he was using this illustration to parallel gold with glory.

Now, what is glory? We sing about it, we read about it and use it all the time, but WHAT IS GLORY?

According to dictionary.com, Glory is a noun meaning:

1. very great praise, honor, or distinction bestowed by common consent; renown: to win glory on the field of battle.

2. something that is a source of honor, fame, or admiration; a distinguished ornament or an object of pride: a sonnet that is one of the glories of English poetry.

3. adoring praise or worshipful thanksgiving: Give glory to God.

4. resplendent beauty or magnificence: the glory of autumn.

5. a state of great splendor, magnificence, or prosperity.

Although these are decent definitions, I love Pastor Mike's definition that glory is "the essence of His existence; the expression of God's self." If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. God is perfect and every good thing comes from Him so if anything is worthy of praise or "glory" it is a glimpse of God's character.

In Isaiah 6, the creatures in Isaiah's vision say “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.” And in Romans 1:20 it says "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

So what does this mean? The whole earth is full of His glory, His essence, glimpse into His character because He created everything out of the existence of nothing but Himself so everything had to come from what He poured out of Himself. (Reread that last sentence. It may be confusing but it is truth.)

Blah blah blah... we already know that everything comes from God but how often do we actually see the good in the world? When we look around at our lives or watch tv, it's easy to see all the things that at bad and miss out on the glimpses of God's glory, but they are there because they "have been clearly seen (...) so that people are without excuse."

In my own eyes, it's easy to see God's glory in a beautiful bouquet of flowers, a Rocky Mountain sunrise or a little kid’s finger paint art but when someone is rude, hateful, or hurtful, I often find myself wondering how there could be glory inside of them. And when I look at myself, at the way I've acted and treated others, I sometimes doubt that this glory is inside of me. But the truth is, there is a "special" glory inside of people and here's a verses from the book of truth to prove it.

Genesis 1:27

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

SEE! Humans are special. God didn't just create us of Himself, He created us in the IMAGE of Himself. (Get excited people, this is awesome!)

 If you’re still not convinced of this glory here are a few more verses:

Psalms 3:2-4

Many are saying of me,
“God will not deliver him.”

But you, LORD, are a shield around me,
my glory, the One who lifts my head high.
I call out to the LORD,
and he answers me from his holy mountain.

Isaiah 43:5-7

Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
I will bring your children from the east
and gather you from the west.
I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the ends of the earth--
everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”

So we were made from the Glory of God FOR the Glory of God. Since we are full of glory though, why do we keep seeing others and ourselves as junk?

Romans 1:21-23

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

By sinning, we cover up the Glory within us and since "all sin and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3) we all cover up this shining glory.

If you think back to panning, this is the perfect illustration. When we don't take the time and believe that there is glory in others, we just walk by the stream and miss the gold (the glory) that's right beside us. Even when we take the time to get out the pan and fill it with the dirt and water, we still have no gold to show for it. It takes the patience of swishing the water back and forth, washing away the dirt(aka the sin) to reveal the gold. If we don't take the time to wash away the dirt, it doesn't mean the gold isn't there; it just means that we didn't find it.

Ephesians 5:25-27

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

-Washing with water through the word reveals the glory just like washing with water reveals the gold. Since God is the fountain of life, he is the water. His truths (conveniently delivered in the bible) will reveal the glory.

Wrap up and Application:

Right now, I really feel like God is asking me to seek the glory not the dirt in others and myself. In order to do that, I need to go panning for gold.

1. Believe that there is Glory. In every person, glory exists because we were made from and in the image of God.

2. Approach people looking for the glory not the grime. If you go looking for dirt, you're going to find it because everyone has sin in their lives. If you go looking for glory, you'll find it too. It just takes more time because we've covered it. Just because it has been covered though does not mean that it can't be found or that its value has decreased. It just takes patience to uncover the glory. As you work on seeing the glory in others though, it will get easier just like a person can get better at panning for gold.

3. Remember that there is glory inside of you and work to reveal it. God's already paid the price to wash away the dirt. Be patient and work on not covering up God's glory inside of you with sin. Nobody is perfect but God's son. He took those sins and He'll do it over and over and over so when you sin, ask for forgiveness and then forgive yourself. Try not to do it again, but if you do, hope is not lost. Just turn to Abba again.

Just like the saying, don't throw the baby out with the bath water, don't throw out the chance of seeing glory because there's dirty water in your pan.

Until next time,

In Christ,

Liza